Moving to WordPress

NOTE: I wrote this over at Fargo, but I cross-posted here so I could tweak the xhtml a little ( still working on templates for my numbering and such). You are reading this on a WordPress powered website. Keep that in mind as you read. I’m a BIG FAN of WordPress.

Yesterday the comments over at AVC became quite a love fest for WordPress.

I’m a big fan of WordPress, and I recommend it to clients and friends all the time, but I don’t think moving a high profile, heavy traffic website like AVC over to WordPress is a trivial matter.

I”ll explain, but first …

These opinions and suggestions were written with one website in mind. This post is not intended to be advice or a tutorial fit for anyone and everyone to follow.

They are also just that – opinions and suggestions.

Why not WordPress?

To be clear, I’m not against AVC moving to WordPress, but there is one reason I think it’s worth avoiding WordPress – or any dynamically driven solution.

• AVC.com is one of my favorite spots on the Internet. Fred Wilson uses it to share his thoughts on a daily basis, and there is a lot of valuable information there. The comment section is also chock full of the opinions of some very smart people. I’ve been working on writing something up about that, but that’s a topic for another day.
• The content over at AVC should be preserved for future generations. If the content were static, moving it over to another location would be as simple as copying files to a new location. It is now possible to set up an S3 bucket on AWS and serve files from that bucket with no need for a server to maintain. I know that presumes that Amazon will survive and that they will continue to offer S3, but the point remains that serving static content these days is a trivial thing.
• Working with a database driven website is not. Sure it’s simple – even easy for people like me ( and for the three of you that read my blog ), but it requires maintenance of several “moving parts.”

If Fred decides to move to WP, what might be the best way to do that?

There are a lot of tutorials online about this, so I’m not going into great detail, but this is how it starts.

1. Finish the new design first. Moving first would require building ( or skinning ) a theme one extra time.
2. Have an xhtml/CSS professional build a WP theme from that design OR use a theme that can be skinned by a CSS pro.
3. Export data from the database and have someone who can work with SQL massage the details, paying special attention to the permalinks. Breaking URLs is a huge mistake.
4. Find a good host known for handling high traffic WordPress sites.
5. From here, follow the standard procedure, but be sure of three things …
   1. Don’t use more plugins than you really need, make sure they don’t conflict with one another, and that they are not poorly coded.
   2. Test for performance under extreme load
   3. Be sure you can access old posts at the existing URLs

But wait, there is a plugin for that …

I know there are solutions to the issues one might encounter moving to WordPress – some that I mentioned ( permalinks, performance issues ), and some I did not ( unicode differences, etc. ). My point, after all, is that these issues should be addressed, which implies that they can be addressed. I just think the best approach is to be sure a programmer ( or someone with the right combination of tech savvy, smarts, courage, patience, and time ) carefully handles the transition.

A plugin is only as good as the programmer who built it – or the last one who edited it. There are, no doubt, many plugins that are very well done, but anyone who has used WordPress to drive a site with any significant traffic will probably tell you stories of plugins that don’t work as advertised or conflict with other plugins or the core function of WordPress.

TL;DR

Moving a high profile, heavy traffic, long lived website is not a trivial matter – no matter where you want to take it.